the Nerdy Misogynists of Joss Whedon’s World

Fig.1: You think it’d kill Joss Whedon to cast some pretty people on one of his shows? Just once?

February 2009 featured the premiere of new TV series Dollhouse, the latest attempt by sci-fi hotshot and badass feminist Joss Whedon to teach the FOX Broadcasting Company what a “cult fanbase” is. Having once been burned by FOX during the run of his previous series, the critically-lauded but still-underrated Firefly (which had its episodes shown out of order, among other random promotional clusterfucks), Whedon apparently has been convinced that FOX has learned its lesson, and will give his new series about human trafficking and high-concept prostitution a chance to really grow into its own. Good luck with that, Joss. While you’re wishing for things, how about a pony?

In all seriousness, though, Dollhouse has started finding its legs with the 6th and 7th episodes (episode 8 of the 13-episode 1st season airs tonight). In brief, the show revolves around a girl named Echo, who has, for reasons becoming slowly revealed to us, voluntarily signed up to become a “doll” for the Dollhouse, a company that provides custom-programmed people who provide services for the super-mega-ultra-wealthy and have their entire personalities wiped clean after every engagement. The dolls hang out in a childlike blank state until they are called to duty, at which point they are imprinted with a customized personality. Need a bodyguard? The perfect date? The Dollhouse has what you need, and it is completely gross. It only takes until the second episode to see Echo sleeping with a client whom she is programmed to think is her boyfriend. Fricking EW.

Fig.2: The best outdoorsy Real Girl sex toy money can buy. Note the Marc Singer-ish Beastmaster profile of the douchebag in this photograph. That’s some solid casting.

Knowing Whedon’s previous work with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, however, which was a landmark of empowering feminist television, helps lesson the ick factor a tad. It’s pretty clear the Dollhouse is being set up as the Bad Guys of the show, while Agent Ballard, an FBI agent who’s the Jack McGee to Echo’s David Banner, is being established as a protagonist. It’s clear now that the first half of the season has aired that once again, Joss Whedon is hoping to make some fairly radical statements about feminism, personal identity, and individualism.

Fig.3: Just good clean fun between super-powered rivals

March 2009, meanwhile, marked the 10th anniversary of Women in Refrigerators, a website run by now-comic book writer Gail Simone. Women in Refrigerators is built around a list assembled by Simone and a number of her friends that catalogued the large number of female comic book characters who have been killed, maimed, raped, depowered, or otherwise messed with, often as a plot device to put a male character through some kind of trial. (The name of the site refers to a storyline where the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern comes home to his apartment to discover his girlfriend, Alex DeWitt, killed and stuffed into his fridge by a supervillain.) The site garnered scads of attention throughout the comics universe and provoked numerous responses from several high-profile comic folks. The responses ranged from the vaguely douchey (X-Men writer Fabian Nicezia defensively demanded a valid statistical analysis) to the conciliatory (Kingdom Come writer Mark Waid: “I’m responsible for the death of [list member] Ice. My call, my worst mistake in comics, my biggest regret. I remember hearing myself ask the editor, ‘Who’s the JLAer whose death would evoke the most fierce gut reaction from readers?’ What a dope”).

Why do so many female characters get irrevocably crapped on (Batgirl’s back is broken by Joker, never recovers, and becomes the wheelchair-bound Oracle) when their male counterparts tend to at least make comebacks from their injuries (Batman’s back is also broken—by Bane—but recovers in no time)? The theories were myriad: Mark Waid points out that “most males are fans of or in comics because they’re social misanthropes who can’t get laid or can’t keep girlfriends and they’re pissed about it on some level;” Marvel editor Jim Shooter simply thinks the comics writers responsible “just suck.”

I don’t think the comic book world is rife with intentional misogyny. (OK, there’s Cerebus creator Dave Sim, but he’s a batshit lunatic and self-described borderline schizophrenic. And if he has his Google alerts set for himself, I’d like to say hi, and thanks for reading, Dave! *gulp*) Oh, believe you me, there’s definite misogyny—I just don’t think most of it’s intentional. When you’re a social misanthrope who can’t get laid, it tends to inhibit your ability to relate to the opposite sex. Sure, you realize women are equals, they’re human beings just like you, blah blah, but the longer it takes to actually get into a successful long-term relationship with one, the more likely you are to see The Female as some sort of weirdo Holy Grail, a be-all-end-all, a prize up on a pedestal. Quoth Ferris Bueller: “If things don’t change for [Cameron Frye], he’s gonna marry the first girl he lays, and she’s gonna treat him like shit, because she will have given him what he has built up in his mind as the end-all, be-all of human existence. She won’t respect him, ’cause you can’t respect somebody who kisses your ass. It just doesn’t work.”

Girls, I’m sure you’ve all had to deal with it: the “nice guy” who’s a great friend and fun dude to hang with, until one day out of the blue he blurts out that he’s been in love with you for the last year, and he’s so afraid of making things weird between you two but he’s SO SURE that you’re totally The One and you’re so perfect in every way and he loves you and whaddya say? And you’re all, “um, oh god, what?” And you’re suddenly looking down at this guy from the pedestal where he’s placed his mental image of the Ideal Woman and has projected your face onto her, and the pressure he’s put on you to not hurt his feelings is suffocating, but cripes, you guys are just friends for a reason, so when you shoot him down as nicely as possible he seems to take it well, but you can tell that things are different now because there’s this undercurrent of resentment in every one of your interactions from then on? You know that guy?

These are the guys who end up writing comic books. Trust me, I know—I’ve been that guy once or twice back in my more awkward pre-sex-with-girls days.

Joss Whedon, geeky male “nice guy” that he is, knows that the world of comic books and science fiction has for years been shaped by men of his ilk whose sexism and objectification of women was never borne out of any true malice toward the female gender, but rather out of a weird manifestation of their own frustrations and inability to relate to girls. And it’s only recently with the premiere of Dollhouse that I realize he’s been writing these guys into his stories for years.

Fig.4: Buffy’s Warren Mears. It should be pointed out that nerds are rarely this hot in real life. That shit’ll throw off a media critic.

Back in the days of Buffy, the Nerd Misogynist character template was occupied to varying degrees by The Trio, a threesome of evil genius nerds who were the primary antagonists to Buffy’s “Scooby Gang” in the show’s sixth season. Most evil of the bunch was Warren Mears, a character that debuted the previous season in an episode called “I Was Made to Love You,” in which he had built a robot girlfriend that he hoped would be easier to deal with than the real girls he had failed with. Of course, his perfect creation proves boring and easy, so he falls in love with (and somehow snags, in the better interests of storyline progression) a real girl, who promptly tells him to screw off and leaves when Buffy makes her aware of robot girl. Naturally, Warren then becomes supervillainy and dedicates his life to getting revenge on the source of his problems—Buffy (because like most nerd dudes—hell, like most people, period—he lacks the self-awareness to realize that his problems are all his fault).

Fig.5: For Dr. Horrible, concocting convoluted schemes to convince the ladies to fall into his arms was much easier than just being fricking charming

[EDIT: Thanks to my pal geekgrrl, I realized I neglected to mention perhaps the strongest example of Joss Whedon’s “Nice Guy” objectifiers: Dr. Horrible of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. What the hell was I thinking? The entire plot centers around the title character, a self-made supervillain who doesn’t have the guts to talk to the girl of his dreams, and when he finally does, becomes “just friends” while she goes on to date his nemesis, the asshole jerk “hero” Captain Hammer. As g33kgrrl says, “the entire show is an allegory for what happens when dudes make all these elaborate plans to win over a girl with insane extravagant gifts and promises instead of just talking to her because she is a human being just like him.” My bad, for frick’s sake.]

Fig.6: “Mom, I’d like to introduce you to my boyfriend Topher.” “What a nice young man. How did you meet him?” “He reprogrammed my brain to fall in love with him.” “Oh, how nice. Who wants s’mores?”

In Dollhouse, the reigning Nerd Misogynist is a (thus far) charming enough lad named Topher Brink. Topher is the top programmer at the Dollhouse and is responsible for imprinting new personalities on and wiping clean the minds of the dolls. At first, he seems like a charming enough guy—definitely geeky, but cute (because he’s played by a Hollywood actor, naturally) and really excited to tell you more than you really wanted to know about the technology he designed. But as the episodes click by, it becomes slightly more obvious that the guy is a douche to the nth power. He treats his assistant Ivy as a silly know-nothing subordinate, when she very likely will end up surpassing his skills. And most telling, he treats his dolls quite literally like toys, talking to and about them in patronizing, almost disdainful condescending tones. And while it could be argued that since the dolls in their mind-wiped states are childlike, he’s speaking to them as if they were children, it’s becoming obvious that Topher is so detached emotionally from the human beings his employers are whoring out that he really does see them as objects to be, well, toyed with.

Yes, there are male dolls in the Dollhouse, as well. That’s just good business sense. But from a metaphoric standpoint, they only exist on the show to soften the blow for FOX’s mainstream audience. I often wonder if anyone is watching this show and reacting to the premise with a thoughtful stroke of the chin and a “hey, that’s kinda cool” rolling around in their brain. I sort of hope not, but sometimes my faith in humanity is sort of low, so I wouldn’t doubt it. What I am 100% certain of, though, is that plenty of nerdy “nice guys” are watching this show and, while squicked out by the premise of the series, probably find Topher a likeable guy—one of the “good guys” that just happen to be employed by an evil corporation. After all, he has that Joss Whedon sense of humor that makes even the most evil of demons seem like someone you’d want to have beers with.

If that’s the case, then Joss has them right where he wants them. I feel like maybe he’s dropped these characters into his shows as a sort of karmic retribution for decades of women in refrigerators—every Gwen Stacy that’s been offered up as a sacrificial lamb for a male character’s emotional “growth.” Warren eventually gets his over on Buffy thanks to the vengeful wrath of hot lesbian witches. Topher’s penance for his role in the Dollhouse’s objectification of its human commodities remains to be seen. Here’s hoping the show stays on the air long enough to give Joss some time to take the character where he wants it to go. And here’s hoping legions of geeky “nice guys” out there find it thoroughly uncomfortable. Not that it’s likely—like Warren, most people in general lack the sort of self-awareness necessary to see aspects of themselves reflected in a fictional character (well, the negative aspects, anyway…when’s the last time you saw a “which Whedon Universe character do you share your deepest flaws with?” quiz on Facebook? That’d be about 100 times less comfortable and 1000 times more interesting).

In the meantime, all you “nice guys” out there who mistake all your ladyfriends passing you over for guys with self-confidence and attitude with them “always going for jerks?” Go Netflix yourselves some seasons five and six Buffy and remember—this could be you. With fewer robots and killing, hopefully, but you get what I mean. After all, what’s the one common element in all your failed attempts to woo the opposite sex? Oh yeah—that it’s you doing the wooing.

“The Dolls in Topher’s Fridge: the Nerdy Misogynists of Joss Whedon’s World” was brought to you by the new Superchunk EP, Leaves in the Gutter; The Obits’ new full-length, I Blame You; Rocket From the Crypt’s All Systems Go, and Drive Like Jehu’s Yank Crime. I’m sort of a nerd for John Reis and Rick Froberg. If I ever meet them I’ll confess my undying love for them and be resentful when they shoot me down politely.